Meet the Bone-Eating Vulture That Dyes Itself the Color of Blood

Vultures are not always the most visually appealing birds. But bearded vultures, or lammergeiers, are beautifully done up, with glossy dark wings, long thin goatees, and KISS-worthy eye masks. Their chests, heads, and legs are especially impressive, colored the rich red brown of polished mahogany. They deserve much of the credit for their fashion sense. These vultures turn their feathers red on purpose, covering themselves in iron oxide by bathing in rusty water or rubbing themselves with damp red soil.

They are the only birds known to intentionally color themselves, and exactly why they do is still not entirely settled.

Lammergeiers eat almost exclusively bones—the last remnants of the meals of other scavengers. Bones from anything smaller than a sheep they can eat whole. They’ll fly larger ones high into the air and drop them onto rocks over and over again until they break up into swallowable pieces.